Department for Communities and Local Government

Social Services: Pay

lord beecham: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the impact of the requirement for the employers of careworkers to pay for sleep-in time and what steps they will take to ensure that local authorities are able to fund the additional costs.

lord bourne of aberystwyth: Local authorities are responsible for commissioning suitable care for anyone assessed as having eligible care needs. It has always been the responsibility of social care providers to pay care workers the National Minimum Wage /National Living Wage for sleeping time, if what they are doing amounts to work under their Contract.Following measures announced in the Local Government Finance Settlement local authorities will have access to £7.6 billion of new money for adult social care by 2019/20. These changes mean that local government will have access to the funding it needs to increase spending on adult social care every year in this Parliament. The key Government departments with an interest in adult social care work together regularly to review the effectiveness of the system to support future decisions.

Department for Transport

High Speed 2 Railway Line

lord berkeley: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they have taken to ensure that all bidders for phase 2B of the HS2 project, including the successful company CH2M, were compliant with Article 42 of Directive 2014/25/EU on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors, regarding conflicts of interest in procurement procedures.

lord ahmad of wimbledon: All applicants are required to identify any real or perceived conflicts of interest together with a management plan for their resolution in their Pre-Qualification Questionnaires submission that is assessed as part of the prequalification evaluation process. Applicants are then required to notify HS2 Ltd immediately if any such information provided with a PQ Application changes at any subsequent stage in the procurement process. HS2 Ltd’s contracts for consultants providing services to HS2 Ltd include conflicts of interest clauses that require the relevant consultants to undertake ongoing and regular conflict of interest checks throughout the duration of their contract and to notify HS2 Ltd in writing immediately on becoming aware of any actual or potential conflict of interest and to work with HS2 Ltd to do whatever is necessary (including the separation of staff working on, and data relating to, the services from the matter in question) to manage such conflict to the HS2 Ltd’s satisfaction. All individuals involved in the evaluation process are required to sign a form confirming that they do not have any conflicts of interest in connection with the bidding organisations before they are allowed to undertake their evaluation, and this forms part of HS2 Ltd’s evaluator training. Any real or perceived conflicts of interest that are raised through any of these routes are referred to HS2 Ltd’s compliance team for resolution or escalated to HS2 Ltd’s Conflicts Panel if required.

Home Office

Refugees: Children

the lord bishop of durham: To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will accept unaccompanied child refugees under section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016 in the financial year 2017–18.

baroness williams of trafford: Under the Immigration Act we made a commitment to transfer a specified number of unaccompanied refugee children to the UK. On 8 February the Government announced that we will transfer the specified number of 350 children to the UK under section 67 of the Immigration Act. This includes the more than 200 children already transferred under section 67 from France as part of the UK’s support for the Calais camp clearance. This number has been agreed following consultation with local authorities on their capacity to accommodate and care for unaccompanied children. We will announce in due course the basis on which further children will be transferred from Europe to the UK under section 67 of the Immigration Act to the specified number.

Evan Mawarire

lord oates: To ask Her Majesty’s Government on what grounds they declined a visa to Pastor Evan Mawarire in 2016, preventing him from addressing UK parliamentarians.

baroness williams of trafford: The Home Office does not routinely comment on individual cases. All applications for a visa to travel to the UK are considered on their individual merits, in accordance with the Immigration Rules.

Department for International Development

Planet Aid

lord patel of bradford: To ask Her Majesty’s Government when the decision was made to stop the Department for International Development funding for the charity Planet Aid; what formal evaluation or audits were made of the work of Planet Aid and when were those carried out; and on what evidence the recommendation to stop Planet Aid funding was made.

lord bates: DFID has no record of directly funding Planet Aid and therefore no record of stopping funding to the organisation.

Department of Health

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

lord freyberg: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the findings of the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership’s National Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Audit Programme: National supplementary report published on 1 February.

lord o'shaughnessy: The pattern identified in the report was increasing number of admissions and readmission together with reduced length of stay and improved mortality. This reflects improvements in acute care for acute episodes in a long term condition for which there is no ultimate cure. The established pattern, backed up by epidemiological data, now appears to be one of increasingly frequent hospital admissions in the last years of life. The Government expects National Health Service commissioners and providers to use the report, along with other evidence, to continue to improve services.

Clinical Reference Groups

baroness wheeler: To ask Her Majesty’s Government when NHS England will publish the details of clinical and patient and public voice members who have been appointed to Clinical Reference Groups since May 2016.

lord o'shaughnessy: NHS England is in the process of refreshing the Clinical Reference Group (CRG) webpages and the names of all CRG members will be published by April 2017.

Health Services: USA

lord pendry: To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the statement by the Secretary of State for Health in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference that "a country that works for everyone takes special care of the public service closest to everyone’s heart", what was the outcome of his recent visit to New York to discuss links and collaboration between the UK and US health sectors.

lord o'shaughnessy: After the referendum vote to leave the European Union, the Secretary of State for Health committed to meeting the Chief Executives of the global top 10 pharmaceutical companies. As part of this, he visited New York to deliver assurance of the United Kingdom’s commitment to life sciences, research and innovation and to encourage United States investment in the UK life sciences sector.